What kind of substance is silly putty

Add 10g of Borax powder and stir until it has completely dissolved. It might help to slightly heat the water. Glue Add 50ml of white school glue into a plastic cup. Any white school glue can be used as long as it is PVA polyvinyl acetate based.

Now add your additives, which can be food color, pigments, iron particles to make magnetic putty , etc. Stir until the additives have completely mixed with the liquid. It often works best to have someone else continually stir while another lab partner adds the borate solution. By combining boric acid with silicone oil, a material resulted that would stretch and bounce farther than rubber, even at extreme temperatures. In addition, the substance would copy any newspaper or comic-book print that it touched.

There is some debate on who received the first patent. Corning Glass Works, who was also developing a substitute for rubber, applied for a patent in and received it in for treating dimethyl silicone polymer with boric oxide.

Wright applied for his patent in In any event, Wright is still officially credited with the invention. By , General Electric GE had shared this discovery with scientists around the world, only to find that none of them, including those at the U. War Production Board, found it more practical than the synthetic rubber already then being produced. Several years later, an unemployed copywriter named Peter Hodgson recognized its marketing potential as a children's toy, after first seeing it advertised at a local toy store as an adult gift.

Hodgson bought the production rights from GE and renamed it Silly Putty, packaging it in plastic eggs because Easter was on the way. However, by Silly Putty was most popular with kids ages six to 12 years old. By the time Hodgson died in , Silly Putty had made him a multi-millionaire.

It was only after its success as a toy that practical uses were also found for Silly Putty. It picks up dirt, lint, and pet hair, and can stabilize wobbly furniture. It has also been used in stress-reduction and physical therapy athletes have used it to strengthen their grip , and in other medical and scientific situations like smoking cessation programs.

When the putty is slowly molded, the crosslinks have time to break and reform at different points in the polymer chains. This means we are able to see the viscous flow of the putty. However, when the putty is pulled with suitable force, the crosslinks do not have time to break and reform, so elastic behaviour is seen.

With suitable force exerted, the putty can even be shattered. That smoking causes cancer is a well known and scientifically proven fact. Hit it with a hammer and it keeps its shape.

Before Photoshop, crafty kids could digitally manipulate and distort images by placing Silly Putty over newspaper , lifting it off, and transferring the ink onto a new surface. According to museum archivist John A. In , Apollo 8 astronauts took Silly Putty to lunar orbit with them in a specially crafted sterling-silver egg.

It amused the bored crew, but the toy also had a practical purpose: It was used to hold down tools in zero gravity. Athletes use Silly Putty to strengthen their grip—a practice popularized by famous football player Raymond Barry. The Columbus Zoo in Ohio once used Silly Putty to make molds of gorilla paws for educational purposes.

No word on whether the animals enjoyed playing with Silly Putty as much as their human counterparts.